The secret life of handmade art dolls

Hallowe'en Goodness

November 01, 2009

I know I'm getting older because I had such a delightful Hallowe'en and it did not involve a string of parties, drenching myself in fake blood, nor even a single fake wound; instead Mr. Lovely and I gave out candy to the trick-or-treaters and then ordered a pizza, drank some wine and watched Carrie.

Mr. Lovely carved the pumpkin, and I was very gratified to hear several kids exclaim, "I got an eyeball!" (or the French equivalent: un oeil!) after we gave them their loot. Oh, veiny delight!

Thin clouds passing over the nearly-full moon directly above us, big yellow leaves blowing by, packs of children in grotesque masks - a more perfect evening could not be contrived, really. And all the little Victorian row houses on our street only added to the atmosphere of ghostliness and decay.

And if you were to walk out into the leaf-blown road and look up, way up (any Friendly Giant fans out there?) into our window, you might see just the slightest shimmer of a little black cat before he's gone!

And while I'm pretty sure there's almost no one left over the age of twenty who hasn't seen Carrie, I will urge you just in case. Or maybe you haven't seen it since it you were a teenager, or since it came out almost forty years ago. It is so, so good; you just have to be willing to surrender yourself to some of the campier aspects. And a film that can squish the themes of female sexuality, religious fanatacism, identity, social ostracism and occult powers into a movie about a senior prom? How could that go wrong? Piper Laurie is just about the coolest, creepiest woman ever (she also did a brilliant turn as Lady MacBeth in a super low-budget BBC production. You know the kind - where a box is meant to represent a banquet table and the curtain is Dinsmore Castle?) And no one other than Sissy Spacek could so beautifully portray an awkward teenage girl who is endearing, affectless and tormented then transform into a terrifying wreaker of adolescent vengeance the next. (Some day I'll have to dig up my pictures of the year I dressed as Carrie...) Anyway, Halloween may be over for another year, but Carrie will chill you to the bone anytime.